To many viewers, Kim Buck’s intricate charcoal drawings are portraits. But to the 28-year-old artist, they are landscapes.

Buck’s latest exhibition, at Peter Walker Fine Art in Adelaide, was inspired by the Blue Mountains, where she lived before moving to Melbourne.

“I used to walk around those mountains, looking at the sandstone foundations, and be struck by how much they mirrored people, not just the visual experience but the feel of them," she says.

Buck has done well since graduating from art school in 2009, picking up dealers in Sydney and Brisbane as well as Adelaide, where she grew up. Most of her works sell for less than $10,000 but she was thrilled when a five-panel piece featuring the actor Anita Hegh, commissioned by the Art Gallery of South Australia for its Heartland exhibition, sold for $42,000 earlier this year. The private collector who bought it must have a big wall: it is more than three metres long.

Michael Zavros is one of Buck’s favourite artists and there are echoes; both make hyper-real drawings – in her case of people, in his of horses, flowers, rugs – often set against stark white backgrounds. Zavros and Buck both sell well but figurative realism is not on trend in art circles. “I kind of like that; I’m happy not to be fashionable," says Buck. Ends December 14.